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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25693504">heartbreak is the real chlamydia</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/ODed_on_jingle_jangle/pseuds/ODed_on_jingle_jangle'>ODed_on_jingle_jangle</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Dare Me (TV 2019), Dare Me - Megan Abbott</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>F/F, F/M, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Implied/Referenced Sexual Assault, Kissing, Underage Kissing</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-08-03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-08-03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 07:27:11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Underage</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,160</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25693504</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/ODed_on_jingle_jangle/pseuds/ODed_on_jingle_jangle</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Beth Cassidy and a series of kisses.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Beth Cassidy/Addy Hanlon, Beth Cassidy/Ben Trammel, Beth Cassidy/Other(s), Beth Cassidy/Will "Sarge" Mosley</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>48</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>heartbreak is the real chlamydia</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Guess I just took book canon and show canon and put it in a big ol' blender, then poured it in a glass and topped it with some whipped crossover cream. </p><p>What the fuck is this, brain, can we please do back to doing the pile of WIPs we already started?</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <strong>I. </strong>
</p><p>Beth is in preschool and it’s recess. She’s playing in the sandbox with her new best friend, Addy, whose smile already lights something up inside her chest that she doesn’t understand and won’t for a long time. Addy keeps sneaking jealous looks toward the blonde boy in the cargo shorts who marches a magnificent toy triceratops over the mounds of sand. So Beth does the only thing she can think to do, snatching his arm and sinking her teeth into his wrist until he yelps and lets go. </p><p>She plucks up the triceratops and blows his cooties off its rubber hide, proudly presenting it to Addy. Addy shrieks with joy and hugs it to her chest. Eyes glittering, she tucks it under one arm and pulls Beth to her. She then plants a sloppy kiss on Beth’s mouth, tasting like apple juice and gummy bears, her colorfully beaded braids skimming against Beth’s furiously blushing cheeks. </p><p>It is the first time Beth has been kissed by anyone outside family. </p><p><strong>II.</strong> </p><p>Beth is in her freshman year and she should be in math class, but she’s kissing Ben Trammel under the bleachers instead. She skipped class because it’s boring but this is pretty boring too. He isn’t a particularly bad kisser, really, but nothing about him excites her, either. There is no spark between them, no tingles when he touches her or murmurs, “baby” into her mouth in a deeper voice than he normally speaks with. </p><p>But his lips don’t taste as unsavory as his dick had and she’s already here, so she sticks it out and keeps kissing him anyway. </p><p><br/>
<strong>III. </strong>
</p><p>Beth is drunk and Addy is too. They roll across the dewy grass under the moonlight, the only people at Lanvers tonight, maybe even the only people left in the world. It certainly seems like it could be true when the way Addy makes her feel burns through everything else she is like an inexhaustible blaze. They own the night, the stars are theirs, shining only for their presence. Addy’s hands feel all over her body and Beth thrums beneath every brush of her thumb, every gentle poke at a bruise, every precious whisper of skin over skin. She watches the hamsa charm twinkle sliver in the dark against Addy’s wrist and fiercely, vigorously urges it to stay there forever. </p><p>Addy kisses her for the second time in her life but it’s the first <em>real</em> kiss, actually, with tongue and tension and sultry heat. Beth swells to the brim with pure love and laughs against Addy’s lips. It’s the first time she’s heard herself laugh unburdened in so long, she scarcely recognizes it, this true and blissful laugh that isn’t a cover for something else, a stifled sob wrapped up in pretty packaging. </p><p>Addy tugs at her shorts and traces her mound through the outside of her underwear, featherlight, exploratory. Beth does the same, tickles her fingertips across Addy’s knee, gently roams a hand along the inside of her thigh. The shorts never come all the way off, but it’s damn near close. </p><p>Beth is sure things are going to change now, and she isn’t wrong exactly, only the changes she hopes for and the changes that actually take place will be entirely different things. </p><p><strong>IV.</strong> </p><p>Beth pushes Will Mosley up against his truck and kisses him while Emily lingers back, hidden in a bush, recording on her phone. She pushes him but he allows himself to be pushed. He is twice her age and twice her size, and he could easily move her away or turn her around. Maybe Beth isn’t so broken that a part of her doesn’t wish he would. </p><p>But he doesn’t. He’s sad and tired, and pliant as the fuzzy pipe cleaners she and Addy did crafts with at cheer camp. Will kisses her back with empty dead fish eyes, lips tasting like cheap bar peanuts and breath reeking of stale beer. Beth puts his hand on her breast and he gives it a numb squeeze before he lets go and stares at her as if she’s nothing but some filthy mistake. </p><p>It’s not exactly what her and RiRi’s bet called for, and yet it’s more than she bargained for all the same. For the life of her she cannot begin to fathom what anyone sees in him— RiRi or Slocum or Colette fucking French. He's standing right in front of her and she doesn’t see anything at all. </p><p>
  <strong>VI. </strong>
</p><p>Beth is at the new school Bert made her transfer to for senior year and finds herself kissing this girl who’s known for diving headfirst into the hard kinds of drugs even most risky, reckless, despondent Gen-Z’s are leery to touch. But Beth knows what it’s like to love things that are bad for you more than you love yourself so she goes all in, fisting her hands into the pockets of this girl’s ratty red sweatshirt and kissing her breathless. Beth sees things she feels but can’t name in her fraught eyes, and kisses her out of this unexpected kinship. </p><p>They’re messed up people who end up messing each other up more for the next few months, but even though Beth isn’t the one who decides to pull away, she shocks herself to find she feels far more relieved than she does rejected. </p><p>
  <strong>VII. </strong>
</p><p>Beth is in college and Bert wanted her in ivy league, but after spending most of senior year high and blowing off class, her grades just couldn’t cut it. So he’s decided to push that desire onto Tacy and shuttled Beth off to state college instead. Beth isn’t particularly enthusiastic, but she does think she’d like to do better this year, so she tries to take her classes seriously and consider the possibility that there is some future on the other side of this, after all. </p><p>There was a time in her life she’d never considered support groups beyond mocking the sad sacks who went to them, but that time has passed. Now she has nightmares on bad nights and someone else living inside her skin on even worse days, so she starts going to one instead. She doesn’t expect her problems to be fixed but it’s not so bad to vent to people who she thinks can understand, at least a little bit. </p><p>She winds up kissing a girl who understands those things and who understands the scars on Beth’s scalp, too. A girl who smiles the way candy at the movie theater tastes and carries her own scars, smooth vertical scars on the insides of her wrists. Her hands are soft and pretty, nails polished royal blue, and Beth tangles their fingers together when they walk each other to and from class every morning. She kisses her in front of the coffee shop they meet in every day after their classes are over, where they share mocha lattes and study their notes and bitch about stupid professors. </p>
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